floral arrangements

We’ve made room in the propagating house for trays of seedlings. We’ve ordered new tools and can’t wait to use them. We’re ready. Raring to go. Fingers tapping. Meanwhile, there’s nothing better than a bucket of sticks. Except maybe an organized potting bench. Or a bag of ladybugs. Or a trip to the Philadelphia Flower […]

Gail, Betsy and I spent this short week getting ready for Christmas at Blithewold and the first evening of Sparkle coming up this Friday. We made (that is, Betsy made) gorgeous terrariums, and put together adorably tiny vignettes under cloches. We hung lanterns and filled bowls with our abundant harvest of cones and seedpods collected […]

I don’t think I have been nearly noisy enough about the cutting garden this year. It is so knock-your-socks-off bloomerific. I’m also not sure I’ve mentioned just how fun it is to pick flowers from it every week and to see the fabulously artful arrangements our volunteer arrangers design with the pickings. Even if we […]

One of the best perks of a garden is having a ready and steady supply of stems to pick to bring inside for flower arrangements. We’re lucky to have a whole garden — The William F. and M. Kathleen Church Cutting Garden — dedicated to that very purpose. It saves us the heartbreak of removing […]

There are often artists in the garden. Some bring easels and paints, others bring notebooks and pens, or just their imagination. Ellen Hoverkamp brought her flatbed scanner and laptop. If you did as I suggested back in May and bought Ken Druse’s latest book, Natural Companions: A Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations, you’d recognize […]